Summer Love: The Love of 'Big Bang'

Dear Tell Me Limeña:

Beyond the anecdote you describe, your question is about the wonder that falling in love produces. It's true that there are slow-moving infatuations that seem to lack danger or aggression. The feeling of not falling in love, or if you have suspicions about it, that the process is so slow that you can control it at will. I quit when I want. If I never see the loved one again, if we never talk again, if everything stays the way it is now, it won't hurt, I'll forget about it, it will mean it was a bad spell. Love is a drug and has all the scenarios of this. The aforementioned "quit whenever you want," the first doses, the dependence, the suppression of the rest of the world beyond the drug, injecting oneself with it, enjoying it, as well as withdrawal, the spiritual and physical emptiness of being deprived of it, the fear of relapsing, the stop going to places and people that lead us to the drug/loved object.

Some drugs are dangerous. Love is. They're also attractive because they provide, at the same time, refuge and pleasure, a sense of existence, of belonging to or isolation from a community. Love is the most powerful weapon, a loaded rifle, the feeling for which you're capable of betraying your family, your friends, your country, your religion, and yourself. Is it worth it? If it doesn't destroy you, then yes. And sometimes, even destroyed and in permanent demolition, it's worth it because you've felt: love, betrayal, pain, renunciation, revenge, solidarity, affection, nostalgia, hatred, and melancholy. It's not bad. Centuries of art contemplate us.

Love is a drug and has all the possibilities of this.

This is my opinion, and we're happy to have four things clear about falling in love and love. But not everyone thinks this way. We'll leave aside some opinions and customs that are contrary to our understanding. The Romans, Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius, sing of a love that is nothing more than an assault on marriage beds and bodies, earthly pleasure, but generally speaking, falling in love is treated as a temporary period of alienation that should be treated like a cold. A week at home, without seeing anyone, with a lyre and regularly pouring yourself Sicilian wine, and it should go away.

The Greeks gave them the possibility that when you fall in love—like when you let yourself be carried away by fury or despair—a little god sneaks in, possesses you, and then vanishes, like a bitch driving on the Ronda del Mig. Ortega y Gasset considered it an imbecility, a psychic angina. Rougemont a dark survival of a medieval heresy that despises the world and tends toward death. Freud speaks of regression. We become infantilized in love because the beloved object is—bingo!—the mother. On the other hand, the 20th century has grown weary of trying to convince us that it's a recent cultural product. Everyone is somewhat right, but everyone is wrong.

Falling in love is addictive because it gives you what you need, what you didn't know you wanted.

Falling in love is a big bang. How it happened, how it could have been avoided, what role chance played. It doesn't matter. It happened, and that big bang shatters social ties and inaugurates new ones. You stop seeing your friends because they were a substitute for him or her, you take her to rehearsals if her name is Yoko and destroy the Beatles, you separate from your family, from your children, you fall out with your parents, you lock the door, throw away the key, and the new room is already different. There's no going back. Falling in love is a hook because it gives you what you need, what you didn't know you wanted, what you can no longer live without. You can accept it or not. Accept it. Seek it or not take it personally. But know that love takes no prisoners.

Cuéntame Limeña (CL) tells the story of a sudden crush on a night out in the family town. Inés, the confidant, the best friend every summer, shone in CL's eyes to the sounds of tacky songs and in the arms of a boy in the main square. CL had no doubt: Inés was her love, absolutely in love with her, and she wouldn't give up on getting into that dance, seeking her out and, holding her hand, being the one to dance with Inés the rest of the night. She was afraid, of course. Of the surroundings, but especially of the fact that she had had brief and absurd relationships with boys from Ejea de los Caballeros and Luna, but CL took the risk with all her might, that she would have no place to return to if it wasn't that love. Inés greeted her first with surprise and then with a smile that dispelled any doubts. They slept together for the rest of the vacation. Falling in love didn't ask for permission, and from the destruction of what existed, it generated a new and better world.